What did happen was that when I started T'bird again, it deleted ALL profiles and created a new one. I had some data in an unused profile that I could have recovered some data from.

Maybe the problem had to do with I did mess with my profile a bit I would suggest that the deletion of profile should not be attached to this process, but rather have a totally separate process for deletion. When someone is trying to deal with data loss, there is lots of anxiety going on and your attention is shorted by it. I just read the Profile instructions and found the "Don't Delete" thing there.